The Silent Protagonist – Magna Carta

Hey all and welcome back to The Silent Protagonist, I said last time that I was going to talk about Magna Carta, and while this is true… I didn’t realise that the original Magna Carta is actually a Charter from 1215. Surprisingly, I’m not going to be talking about that. Nor am I going to talk about the first “Magna Carta” game, released in 2001 in South Korea; simply because I didn’t know about it.

Rather, I’m going to talk about “Magna Carta: Tears of Blood,” the first game to be released in the series outside of Korea.

It was released back in 2006 for us in Europe, and on the PS2, brought to us by 505 Games… although the game doesn’t appear on their product list website… weird.

Regardless, the story follows a Human Mercenary, called Calintz, and the organisation he works for, The Tears of Blood, as the Humans wage war against the Yason. As the humans look for a way to deal a critical blow to the Yason, they decide to invoke the Forbidden Magic. This powerful spell is successfully released, despite heavy losses to the Human Alliance. Fortunately for the Yason, their queen, Amila, utilises the power of the Magna Carta, which nullifies the blast, rendering the Human efforts useless.

As the Humans flee, Calintz holds off one of the elite warriors of the Yason, destroying the bridge he was on, seeming to sacrifice himself to protect his friends and allies. When he regains consciousness, he is being healed by a woman in a bright yellow outfit, who has no memory of past, only that her name is Reith.

What does fate have in store for these two as they travel the world, aid the wounded, fight the war and regain Reith’s memories?

Despite the many flaws of the game, such as the linearity, often poor voice acting and the blacksmith quests, it’s actually really good fun, the story itself is well thought out, the battles are the right amount of frustration and fun… and Reith walks about in a giant yellow costume, akin to a Chocobo. What more could you ask for? It’s cockamamie! Kweh?

When manoeuvring through the story, you normally travel by foot, as ridiculous as this next statement sounds, you can either run or walk. If you walk, you walk with your sword drawn, and you can never be surprised by enemies, however if you run, your weapon is sheathed and you become remarkably short sighted, unable to see the monsters you’re meant to kill which are a few feet in front of you. We won’t ask questions though, because it’s common knowledge that drawing a sword means you can see further.

Reith walks about in a giant yellow costume, akin to a Chocobo. What more could you ask for?

When drawn into combat, you will notice three things.

1. A Leadership gauge in the top right
2. The Elemental Chi in the top left
3. Your selected character’s current fighting style and health in the bottom left.

The leadership gauge is a line that fills up over time, and is basically like an ATB. When the bar is past a triangle, you can deal damage. Every time you go to deal damage, a mini QTE event occurs, where you have to press either “X” or “O” in three successions to attack, each attack uses a certain amount of Chi, the availability of which depends on the location.

For instance, the Ten’en Sho is a water and ice sword style, which is found in abundance in areas that are cold, or wet. However, the reverse is also true; don’t expect to use this style when scaling a volcano. When attacking, a certain amount of the Chi is consumed, and is restored at a rate proportional to the amount in the environment, so when fighting on a volcano slope, fire Chi regenerates a lot faster than any other kind of Chi.

Unfortunately, your enemies also use Chi to attack and when it’s all gone, don’t expect to deal any damage… Despite this, your foes still manage to magically use Chi that isn’t there, constantly dealing damage to you.

All styles have a “Standard” mode, while some also have a “Combo” and/or a “Counter” mode. Standard allows you to deal one attack per turn, whilst maintaining a defense. Combo leaves you completely exposed, but requires you to input a sequence of nine to twenty-seven QTE’s and do one devastating attack, just don’t miss one. Finally, Counter allows you to nullify an enemy’s attack, and deal damage to them, with the only problem being that you have to guess what the QTE combination is. Have fun with that one!

I could easily go on and on about this game, but despite its very obvious faults, and unanswered questions, I do not regret loosing 50+ hours to this game.

Next time on The Silent Protagonist, as I splurge about Tales of Symphonia.

To be continued…